


Incidents and Accidents

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-23
Updated: 2010-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Incidents and Accidents

There is something very familiar about this.

Ryland has no idea what's going on, for one thing, but that's only the first part that's familiar.

Pete is cursing a low, sullen streak, one that occasionally spikes up into a yell of pain or outrage or pain mixed with outrage. He's refusing to stay put, but when he moves, he stumbles and bumps into things. He's trailing a mess wherever he goes, his shirt soaked with it.

The shirt's what tips Ryland off, actually. It's soaked with blood, not booze or vomit, and that's the divergence from his expectations that makes them obvious.

Today, on this flight from Seattle, the role of Gabe will be played by Pete.

And the role of Ryland is being played by Gabe, not badly at all. He has his arm around Pete's shoulders and he's talking low and fast, trying to keep him too distracted to get mad again. It's a stalling tactic that Ryland considers himself to have mastered, but Gabe's not half bad. A solid B+, A- on the curve.

Of course, he has an unfair advantage, because Pete is of a size that can easily be held still. When Ryland's playing corral the fucked-up Saporta (not to be confused with wrestle the greased-up Saporta; bus games are _different_ ), he has to expend a lot more energy on not getting knocked over or elbowed in the face.

Pete says something half-articulate but probably very rude and buries his face in Gabe's shoulder. Gabe slides his arm around Pete's waist and hugs him, meeting Ryland's eyes over the top of Pete's head with a shrug. His mouth twists in a half-smile but his eyes are concerned. Ryland gives him a thumbs-up and goes back to trying to figure out how to get past the password lock on Pete's phone and delete his rage Tweets. It's what Gabe would do if his hands were free.

It's what Ryland would do for Gabe.  
**  
Ryland is the man at Gabe's right hand, literally and figuratively. With great proximity comes great responsibility. And exasperation. And liver damage.

"Regrets, I have a few," he intones into the mic at soundcheck.

"Sinatra was last week's theme," Alex says. "I object."

"Object all you want, I don't know any Johnny Cash." Ryland takes a breath and looks up at the ceiling, then out at the room. He imagines it full of tiny scene children in thick eyeliner and terrible hair.

"Regrets, I have a few," he sings again.

Gabe's standing at his own mic, sipping from a water bottle, looking at Ryland with a cool, blank expression. Waiting for something.

"That's a lie," Ryland tells the room, gesturing at the sound booth to turn his levels up higher, higher. "No regrets here."  
**  
Through a complicated series of events that none of them will be able to reconstruct later, they end up at a bar with an old-school DDR machine. First generation. Hardcore.

"Fuck your mother," Gabe says, and takes off his jacket. "Someone get me an entire bucket of quarters."

Gabe doesn't dance like he's got something to prove, which is to say that Gabe doesn't dance like he does everything else in his life. They all watch at first, laughing and catcalling as he jumps and spins, staring at the screen with a rapt intensity that some people reserve for playoff football. Or God.

After a while the others get bored and wander off, and it's just Ryland standing there. Ryland watching and Gabe moving, sweat-slick in the lights, head tilted back and throat moving with every breath and swallow he takes, alive under the skin.  
**  
Victoria's pissed and the dressing room's full of stormclouds, centered around where she's standing at the mirror straightening her hair. Ryland watches the set of her shoulders, the angle of her wrists, and wonders what kind of act of God it would take to get either of them to admit how alike they are. Gabe telegraphs his anger the same way, in the line of his hips and the sharpness of a gesture.

Currently Gabe is locked in the back of the bus and refusing to come out.

Rylad sighs and looks at Nate, tilting his head back toward Victoria. Nate nods and gives him a no-worries grin, like it's already taken care of. They all have their gifts, their unmarketable areas of expertise.

Ryland's is speaking fluent Gabe. Talk about a niche market.  
**  
The air side-stage smells like beer and acrid smoke from whatever circuits they blew during set-up. The venue insists they're fixed now and absolutely _not_ going to send them all to a fiery death mid-show. Ryland is not convinced, but his opinion was not requested, and when given anyway, got rejected.

He's not bitter. When they're all dead, he'll have the last laugh.

Gabe is singing softly, chanting the lyrics really, two fingers pressed against his own throat. "And you take that part," he says. "You come in there and carry that line."

Ryland nods, mentally planning that out, filling in the set plan in his mind. There's an art to it, it's not just dividing up their songs like carving a chicken. It's reluctant and it's required and they don't talk about it anymore.

Gabe hums, curving his whole palm over his throat. His eyes are unfocused, like he's watching something just past the wall. Ryland has no idea what he's thinking about.

He waits.

"I got the rest of it," Gabe says finally, blinking slowly, zeroing back in. He smiles, the one that demands to be washed in vodka. "Tonight, anyway. We cool?"

"Ice cold, my liege."

"Let's pre-game." Gabe heads for the bar, and Ryland rolls his fingers against his hip, imagining the weight of his guitar.  
**  
There are nights where the monsters in Gabe's head-- _demons_ is cliche and anyway there's nothing magic about these, they are all entirely prosaic and understandable and depressing--mean that it's not best practice for him to be alone. Gabe doesn't sleep on the moving bus, anyway, he never can and never has, and the idea of fitting them both into one bunk would require a tub of Crisco and a hatchet.

So they sit in the lounge and they stare at bad movies, hacking their way through genres with grim determination, legs stretched out and eyes burning with pain that gets absolutely unreal when enough hours have passed.

Gabe barely _breathes_ , in their redeye sessions; he doesn't speak, his fists clench and relax and his fingers twist together into alien knots. He plays with a lighter, or a pen, or a pocket knife that he is not supposed to have at all considering how often they're at airports. Whatever it is, he rolls it between his fingers endlessly, clicking whatever will click and snapping whatever will snap until Ryland takes it away with one hand and covers Gabe's with the other, weaving their fingers together and making him be _still_.

There are a few nights that they kiss, a few where they touch and fumble and get off on the ugly lounge couches, but sex with someone who hates the feeling of the inside of his own skin is one of the most definitively sad experiences of Ryland's life. He tries to keep monster nights to movies and hand-holding and counting down until morning, if he can.  
**  
Between tours he hands Gabe off to the care of others, who presumably know what they're doing. There are entire sections of his life that require attention, vast fertile gardens for him to tend and hoe. And also things that don't involve metaphors that imply willingly spending time outdoors.

It's never all that long before they end up in the same place, though. It's like magnetism, or things that don't involve metaphors that he doesn't understand.

He considers the difference between an obligation and a vocation. He considers what friendship means when you live your life in each other's pockets, when you've seen the monsters, when you're both old enough that you chose this with open eyes.

He takes the shot that's offered. He grabs a napkin and suggests they write another song.  
**  
When Gabe asked him to join the band, they were sitting in a diner that would close down for health code violations two weeks later. Ryland had a strawberry milkshake and a giant plate of fries. Gabe ate half of them.

"It's a giant fuck-you to all the bullshit, man," Gabe said. "A fuck-off. A fuck _everything_."

Ryland nodded slowly. "I do like fucking."

"Exactly." Gabe sat back in his seat and grinned, like Ryland had already agreed to everything.

"I'll think about it," Ryland said, because he was a lady, goddamn it, and Gabe was at least going to pay for the milkshake before he got Ryland to put out.

Gabe glanced at him and something in his smile changed, got a little shyer, a little sweeter. Just slightly more true. "It's only fair to tell you that it's entirely possible that I have no idea what I'm doing."

Ryland looked at him for a minute, slowly turning his straw. "Might be fun to figure it out."

Gabe's grin got wider. "You'd be my right-hand man," he said, and reached across the table, all earnest and literal.

Ryland returned the gesture for no good reason, and shook on it, and that was that.  



End file.
